The contrast is all the more striking when you look at the science fiction of the 1950s and 1960s, in which transport technology looms large, whereas computers hardly figure at all. The future, we were told, would include routine space travel, supersonic airliners and personal gyrocopters. No mention of the internet, social media or watching movies on mobiles. I recently dug out an old cartoon strip from 1958 about the future called ‘Closer than we think’. One image shows a ‘rocket mailman’, propelled through the air by a personal jetpack, delivering letters to a house. My grandparents had the
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